"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell

"Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived."
Machiavelli

"The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.." H.L. Mencken

Thursday, December 29, 2016

End Times

My latest newspaper column. It'll appear Saturday, but why wait?

Our democracy had a nice run, didn’t it? However, when one political
party values truth, public education, press freedom, equal rights, economic
fairness, and unencumbered elections while the other sees them as obstacles and
it’s taken full control, survival is improbable.

We knew it was coming when Fox “news” appeared, calling
itself “fair and balanced” while off-gassing disinformation and context-altered
video. Simultaneously, right-wing attacks increased on so-called mainstream
media; i.e., any that didn’t parrot the party line. There’s now a hardened core
of voters who reject any evidence, no matter how solid, which refutes their
preferred disbeliefs. To them, climate change is a hoax, Hillary is crooked and
Donald isn’t, Putin is our pal, trickle down economics works. They deny Trump
lies, or they’re okay with it; can’t tell the difference or don’t care. How
many believe he won “one of the biggest Electoral College victories in
history”? Amazingly (or not), fifty-two percent of Republicans think he also won
the popular vote.

“The big lie” was beanbag. This is nuclear war on reality. If
most politicians lie sometimes, in Trumpland it’s foundational, and it’ll
continue until followers demand better. Forever, in other words.

Inculcated ignorance is America’s weapon of mass self-destruction:
deliberate falsehoods repeated enough to enough credulous people to take hold,
no matter how absurd. If you’ll believe Hillary Clinton was running a child sex
ring out of a pizza joint, believe it enough to bust into the place locked and
loaded, you’ll believe anything. And it’s not just that guy. It’s Trump’s choice for national security advisor and his ex-transition team son, who said of pizzagate, “Until proven false
it’ll remain a story.”It’s Trump’s go-to source for the latest
lunatic conspiracy, Alex Jones ; it’s his
senior policy advisor, Steve Bannon, straight from the internet’s second most
deranged website, right after Jones’.

Nor is this the fringe of today’s Republican Party. It’s
their Speaker of the House, who claims Trump’s lies should be ignored, and
their vice-president-elect, who considers them “refreshing.” Taking it to its ineluctable
conclusion, a member of Trump’s staff recently said, “There’s no such thing as
facts anymore.” Another announced that what’s important is not whether
something is true, it’s whether enough people BELIEVE it’s true. Knowing full
well the power of this proposition, they’re doing everything necessary to
unbuild the wall between truth and fiction. As effective as it’s already been,
it’ll be catastrophic when the disseminators have all the power. If you’re not
worried, you’re assimilated.

So this is how it ends: when the people in charge see truth
as inimical to their intentions, their leader producing lie upon lie amidst ominous
threats of retribution against media and all who criticize, including
Congressional Republicans. Some out of fear, as several Congressfolk have
admitted, others out of gullibility, a critical mass of Americans is joining in
or staying silent. Inducing silence by creating fear of reprisal has always
preceded the march to tyranny. We’ve embarked on the road.

Not satisfied that his Goebbellian attacks on critical media
will keep his flock adequately narcotized, after the CIA confirmed Russian
hacking, Trump went after the intelligence community, too. Because if there
remain any credible sources of information that runs contrary to his perpetual
prevarication they must be swept away. Attention diverted, Trumpophiles are
eager to be swept along. If truth is dispensable to one political party, it
most certainly is not to democracy. History tells what follows. George Orwell,
it turns out, was a documentarian.

If you believe, for a few examples, Trump’s conflicts of
interest don’t matter, millions voted illegally, Sharia law can be imposed here,
homosexuality is a choice, the press is our enemy, we can ignore climate
change, there’s a war on Christmas, the CIA is wrong, Trump will “drain the
swamp,” he has a secret ISIS plan, his Russia connections aren’t worrisome, “the
president can’t lie if he doesn’t know the truth,” you’ve been cozened by a carefully
constructed con. For the next four years, we’ll have a president more likely to
be lying than truthful, while too many members of a once-respectable political
party, hating “liberals” more than they love democracy, blind to the
consequences, thinking (until it’s too late) they’re winners, won’t care.

If we are gonna get screwed, we should at least vote for someone who is for using plan B the next day.

Here's my thing...

Curbing propaganda is not against the 1st amendment. You can't say "bomb" on a plane or "fire" in a theater. But you can incite violence based on a giant pile of steamy stupid and ignorance as fuel. You can even threaten to kill Obama on TV. Ted "Ten Fingers of Doom" Nugent got a big fat "Shut up or else we jail and fine your life away." from the men in black. That shut him up real quick.

"Uncle Ted is a coward and surrendered his right to free speech to a corrupt, illegitimate POTUS." on the next Hannity."

Like that would ever air on "F... the 'news'" unless it had doctored video and a BS narrative.

The answer is don't let Tokyo Rose or Goebbels rent space with your media outlet everyday. But ratings is money, so Drumpf gets more TV time than all others combined. He's like Jones and FOX. The one person who holds the truth. The only media you can trust. So 1/2 of America gets their propaganda from a finite number of places. The other 1/2 gets their news from everywhere. Thus ratings are tough to get for these news outlets who are not 'alt right'.

This is why study after study shows that the red team voters are as gullible as can be.

Perfect! Or nearly so. The Borg had a queen but I don't think that the current collective has a queen, king, or emperor. On casual reflection every putative leader is revealed to be just a front man or woman, or in Trump's case, a tool. There's at least another collective behind the larger collective. Maybe it's a mess of Russian dolls (you used that once I believe) not all of which fit cleanly together. One thing is for sure: they all share responsibility for the crime being perpetrated on us and the U.S.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™